Charles sat back and allowed the footman to remove the remains of his fish souffle and empty wine glass. Whatever the business at the museum, he could not help feeling sorry for the Duchess, who was so obviously unhappy. But at the same moment, he heard Kate laugh, and felt himself buoyed by an enormous lightness of spirit. Thank God he did not have such troubles as the Duke and Northcote were in for, if they continued to fling themselves like a pair of mindless moths at Miss Deacon’s seductive flame. Thank God for Kate, for her great good humor, her good sense, and her steadfast love. He wouldn’t trade her for all the duchesses in the world.
At that moment, Kate leaned forward. “Charles,” she said, “did you happen to see a newspaper when you were in Oxford today? I wonder if you have any news of the American motorist who is attempting to drive across the continent.” The story was being followed by the British press, which seemed to be as astonished by the idea that some lunatic might make the attempt as by the possibility that he might actually succeed.
“Horatio Nelson Jackson and his bulldog, Bud.” Winston put in with a laugh. “What a wild, woolly adventure, and so out-and-out American! Almost as brash as Roosevelt’s scheme to dig a canal across the Isthmus of Panama.”
He sobered. “Although of course Roosevelt has exactly the right idea. If he has a canal, he won’t need two navies, one on the east coast and one on the west.”
“The canal, the motor car trip-it’s all the same idea, when you stop to think about it,” Charles replied. “A linkage between east and west. Except that Horatio Nelson Jackson-what a wonderful name! — is doing it on his own. The ultimate personal effort.”
“The ultimate folly, if you ask me,” Marlborough said, pulling his thin eyebrows together. “What idiot would want to drive a motor car where there aren’t any roads? And if Jackson wanted to get across the country, why didn’t the fool simply go by train?”
“Where’s your sense of adventure, Sunny?” asked Miss Deacon playfully. “I think it sounds like divine fun, and frightfully dangerous.” She shivered deliciously. “Why, the man might be captured by Indians, or murdered by robbers!”
“As a matter of fact,” Charles said, “I read that Jackson drove safely into Omaha, Nebraska, on Sunday. Must have been quite a celebration. But he still has a long way to go-some thirteen hundred miles.”
“Yes, but if he’s got as far as Omaha,” Kate said, “he’s more than halfway there. And he’s over the Rocky Mountains, which must have been the worst part. It’s all downhill from there, so to speak.”
“I’d give anything to be in New York when he arrives,” Consuelo said, her eyes sparkling. “Wouldn’t you, Kate? Such an amazing feat-I’m sure the whole city will turn out. There’ll be a parade on Fifth Avenue, and bands and bunting and flags flying everywhere, just like the Fourth of July. Glorious!”
“You Americans,” Marlborough said scornfully. “Always so childish. Any silly excuse for a parade.”
Consuelo, obviously wounded, lowered her eyes. Charles thought the remark offensively patronizing, and did not even smile, but Miss Deacon laughed and Northcote and Winston joined in.
And with that, dessert was served.
CHAPTER NINE
Thursday, 14 May
Rosamond the fayre daughter of Walter lord Clifford, concubine to Henry II (poisoned by queen Elianor as some thought) dyed at Woodstocke where king Henry had made for her a house of wonderfull working, so that no man or woman might come to her, but he that was instructed by the king, or such as were right secret with him touching the matter. This house by some was named Labyrinthus… which was wrought like unto a knot in a garden, called a maze…
Walking was one of Kate’s passions. When she was at home at Bishop’s keep, the estate she had inherited from her Ardleigh aunts, she went out for a tramp through the lanes and footpaths almost every day, wearing sensible boots and an ankle-length walking skirt and carrying field glasses and a stout walking stick. She’d brought her walking gear to Blenheim and hoped to go out often, if only to escape from the uninhabitable palace.
How did Consuelo manage, she wondered with a shudder, living day after day in such a dispiriting place? She couldn’t endure it, she knew. Blenheim would suck all the life and creativity right out of her. Perhaps it was her American democratic spirit, but she knew she’d feel as if she were living in a vast imperial museum, full of relics of British conquest and domination, and she was its curator. Or a splendidly gilded jail, and she was both its jailor and its prisoner.
But the Park around the palace was lovely beyond words. This morning, the rising sun was a pale silver globe draped with ghostlike mists, and in the pearly light, Kate could see geese and ducks and swans sailing on the lake and hear them speaking to one another in low, comforting calls. However she might feel about the palace, she had fallen in love with the lake and woodlands and meadows, which seemed to change with each hour of the day, with the slightest change in the wind and weather. Early morning-before anyone but the staff was up and about, before the groundskeepers began their work-morning, for Kate, was the best time of all. Yesterday morning and the morning before, she had explored the East Park, the Cascades, and the Swiss Cottage, as well as the wilder, more sinister forests of High Park.
On this morning, Kate had risen just as the sun came up, dressed quietly, and set out in the company of her friend and coauthor, the intrepid, invisible, but very real Beryl Bardwell. Kate was carrying an artist’s folding stool, a sketchpad and pencils, and a notebook. She and Beryl had visited Rosamund’s Well on Tuesday afternoon-just a quick visit, to get the lay of the land and to give themselves something to think about. This morning, Kate wanted to sit in the grass below the spring, to sketch its setting and make notes, while Beryl wanted to dream about a time when there had been a pleasure garden and a cluster of buildings-the famous Rosamund’s Bower-on the hillside above, as well as a royal hunting lodge, which over the centuries had been altered and enlarged until it became a palace as stately and substantial as Blenheim was now.
It was all gone, of course, dissolved into the mists of time and remembered only in legend and the occasional desultory conversation, like last night’s table talk. Rosamund’s Bower and the grand palace had fallen into ruin, the sites had been razed, and the building stones used to construct the foundations of the Grand Bridge. But the bower and the palace were still there, in Kate’s and Beryl’s imaginations-and so much clearer now, after Kate had read one of the books she’d bought in the bookstore, The Early History of Woodstock Manor and its Environs.
According to the book, the Norman kings of England had first hunted in the forests of Oxfordshire some nine hundred years ago. It was probably Henry I, at the beginning of the twelfth century, who enclosed a park near the village of Woodstock, for he had kept a menagerie there: a lion, leopards, lynx, and camels, and even a porcupine-all exotic creatures never before seen in England. Perhaps, Kate thought with a little smile, the stone wall around the grounds had been built to keep the porcupine from wandering off.
Henry’s park, of course, was nothing at all like the open ornamental landscape that now existed. Then, there had been no lake, only the pretty little River Glyme winding through a marshy valley, its banks rising steeply on either side. The woodlands had provided venison for the royal table, sport for the royal household, and timber for royal buildings, while the river was dammed to create small fishponds, where pike, eel, and bream were impounded. No one could take fish or game or fell trees except by royal permission.